1. The Field of the Invention
The entire content of the aforementioned patent application is incorporated herein by reference.
2. The Relevant Technology
As the Internet and the accompanying Internet commerce have expanded, various website owners have sought to track a variety of data about individuals who visit their websites. In particular, website owners often wish to gather a variety of different analytic data about the visitors who view their webpage. In many cases, this analytic data can be used to determine things such as what advertisements to display to a visitor and what fees should be paid to various external advertisers.
One conventional method for generating analytic data on website visitors is through the use of tags. In at least one conventional form, a tag is a hidden element within a webpage that causes some action to occur on a webpage when it is fired. In particular, in at least one implementation, a tag is a piece of code that is placed within a webpage and allows a webpage owner to track information about the visitors who download and execute the particular piece of code. For example, a tag can comprise a transparent GIF or a tracking pixel, which is placed within the code of a webpage. The actual transparent GIF or tracking pixel can be stored on a separate server from the actual webpage. The tag is fired when the browser requests the transparent GIF or tracking pixel from the separate server. When the separate server receives the request from the browser, the server can gather various analytic data about the requestor.
Once executed, a tag can gather information such as where the visitor came from (e.g., what webpage or search engine), what keywords were used to find the webpage, whether a particular advertisement directed a visitor to the page, and other related data. In many situations, a single webpage can comprise multiple tags from a variety of different parties. For example, a particular webpage may contain a Google Analytics tag, a Facebook tag, a page-counter Tag, a weather tag, and other similar tags.
In order for the analytic data gathered by tags to be complete, websites with a large number of pages must have tags on every single page. If a page is missing a particular tag, then analytic information associated with that particular tag will not be gathered for the page. Additionally, some tags may become outdated or may be deemed a security risk. In these cases, the tags must be removed from every individual page within the website. As the number of tags and the size of websites have increased, managing the tags contained within a website has become an unwieldy task.
One development to help with issues relating to the control of tags within websites has been the implementation of tag management systems. Tag management systems function by replacing the plurality of individual tags on a webpage with a single master tag. When a user loads the master tag, the tag management system identifies, using a set of rules, which of a plurality of individual tags should be allowed to run on the webpage. The tag management system then allows the identified tags to fire.
A properly implemented tag management system can provide the benefits of, among other things, only requiring a single tag to be implemented on each page of a website and providing a single interface through which all of the tags can be controlled. In practice, however, it can be difficult to implement a tag management system within a website that has previously placed tags within its pages. In particular, it can be difficult to determine what rules should be applied to each individual page within a website in order to ensure that a tag management system associates the correct tags with each individual page.
In many cases, different webpages within the same website will contain different tags. Additionally, some webpages may be missing particular tags or may contain tags that are not necessary. In order for a tag management system to properly function, specific rules relating to each webpage must be created that lay out exactly what tags should be allowed to run and under what conditions they should be ran.
Accordingly, there are a number of problems in the art relating to the creation of rules for a tag management system that can be addressed.